From Aesthetic Integration to Applying Art: Arnold H. Maremont, the EPEC seminar, and the Planning of SIU Edwardsville

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Spring 2004 by Kerber, Stephen

Only Hideo Sasaki thought that "the automobile and its characteristics" might be "exploited for their design characteristics." He suggested that the movements of automobiles might be used "to create a sweeping view, an up and down effect, or a sense of arrival."53 Reyner Banham (filmed while serving as a visiting lecturer at SIU) feared that outlawing automobiles from campus might double a sense of isolation from real life sometimes associated with a university. Banham proposed instead a two-level university: one for cars and one for pedestrians.54

While many others remained noncommittal about the issue of ornamentation on buildings, Yale's Josef Albers expressed a strong negative opinion. "You ask about murals or mosaics on buildings, I say 90 percent of it is junk."55 Sybil Moholy-Nagy also expressed opposition to campus art as embellishment or ornament.56 Andrew Ritchie said that all forms of building ornamentation "should be considered with the architecture, and not added as after thoughts. "57

John Burchard argued in favor of personality rather than anonymity in campus architecture. He explained that a completely flexible scheme "has no character" and that the "things we remember best are the very positive things, with great character."58 Andrew Ritchie supported Burchard in this position. Ritchie considered that it "is a disastrous compromise to deny style by putting up an anonymous box of glass and steel."59

With respect to the issue of planning for an ever-changing community Buckminster Fuller (at this time an SIU research professor) expressed apprehension that a brick and mortar campus might become obsolete by the time it reached completion. Instead, Fuller advocated the construction of huge, unpartitioned free-span enclosures.60 However, Hideo Sasaki agreed with John Burchard's observation that excessive preoccupation with the future might well be dangerous in planning. "The future will be something different" than we can accurately anticipate, Sasaki pointed out, "so we're always living in a partly built house."61

Sybil Moholy-Nagy pled for a campus planned around the social needs of human beings, including the need for people to relate to one another. To that end, she endorsed Earl Bolton's idea of building faculty residences on the campus.62 Howard Becker agreed with Moholy-Nagy that the significance of interpersonal relationships should be of prime concern to planners of new campuses. "Students must have places where they can meet, and talk and know each other," Becker said. "A population of commuters would be a very primitive student culture and a commuter campus would need places where students could count on seeing each other regularly. The problem will be to break down their aloofness and to develop small groups of common interests within the large student body."63

Admiration for the topography, flora, and fauna of the Edwardsville site proved to be a point of unanimous agreement among the commentators. Edmund Bacon described the site as "extraordinarily beautiful." He remarked that the charm of the land called for a campus that would "make a great statement about the relationship of man to nature."64 Sibyl Moholy-Nagy described the property as "so beautifully pure that it is its own decoration." "You may not realize," she said, "how beautiful it is."65